


Stay While the Melody's Sung

by Secret Staircase (elwing_alcyone)



Category: Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen | Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 16:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15513765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/Secret%20Staircase
Summary: Sakuya tries to hide it, but she's dreading the Kagura. Sayaka tries to help, but she has worries of her own.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Phew, finished this just in time for FF4's tenth anniversary! Which also roughly corresponds to my tenth year in this fandom, wow. This fic was inspired by a conversation several months ago about how Sakuya and Sayaka must have known each other and would have been about the same age; everything else grew backwards from there.

Her mother isn't coming to the Kagura. Sakuya's known that for a long time, and Mother doesn't look sad to be left behind. She's calm tonight, sitting in her room with the blinds drawn, the radio playing and all the lamps on. She kisses the top of Sakuya's head when Sakuya goes in at moonrise to say goodbye.

"Take care of yourself, all right?" she says, straightening the collar of Sakuya's best kimono. "I'm proud of you."

She's almost like she used to be, in Sakuya's earliest memories, gentle and soft-spoken, but even then her eyes are wandering. Still, it doesn't feel right to set out without her. Sakuya glances back as her father slides the door shut; her last glimpse is of a woman kneeling at a mirror, serenely brushing her hair, like a character from an old play.

All the way from their house to the Yomotsuki residence, the moon watches them from over the trees. Sakuya keeps looking up at it, hoping to see a change, even though she knows the eclipse wouldn't start until later. But it looks as it always has, like a golden-yellow coin, no sign of what's to come.

Her father leads her in through the open front door. She can already hear the sounds of rowdy talk and laughter from the main room, but her father takes her by the hallway instead. It's quiet and shadowy there, lit only by a few lamps placed along the floor. The Yomotsukis still use old-fashioned paper lamps with candles inside, and the dim, flickering light deepens Sakuya's sense of being in a story or a dream.

Sayaka Minazuki is already waiting by the doors at the back of the house. There aren't any strangers on the island, at least among the older families, but Sakuya and Sayaka have never talked very much. The Minazukis live almost by themselves on one of the smaller islands, cut off by the high tide twice a day.

Her father dons his mask and goes to join the other islanders in the main room, and Sakuya takes her place by the door next to Sayaka. "Hi," she whispers, when she's sure her father's out of earshot.

"Hello," Sayaka whispers back. She glances at Sakuya briefly, then drops her eyes. She's always been quiet - shy, Sakuya thinks - but tonight she holds herself with a steady composure that Sakuya admires. She tries to stand straighter herself.

"I thought they would have picked you as a Kanade," Sakuya says. She has a vague memory of Sayaka playing the piano at a school talent show once. "Didn't you want to?"

"My grandmother said I couldn't," Sayaka says with a sigh. "Girls in our family can't take part in the actual Kagura. It's tradition."

"Oh, that." Sakuya wrinkles her nose. Tradition is why they're standing here in a dark back room, after all, instead of gathering in the Lunar Eclipse Hall with all the other children. "My mother didn't want me to, either. She and my father argued about it a _lot_. Finally he said I could be an usher."

Someone in the main room makes a joke, and everyone laughs. Sakuya frowns at them through the wall. She thinks they should try to be dignified, if she has to be. "How long do you think they'll be in there?"

"Probably not much longer," Sayaka says, sounding doubtful. "The dance starts at midnight, but I don't know what time it is now.

Sakuya fidgets, then reminds herself that if Sayaka, two years younger, can stand so still and straight, she should be able to do it as well. She starts to ask Sayaka more about her family, but Sayaka whispers,

"Listen."

A breeze blows in through the window, laced with the scent of warm greenery and the sea, and with it comes the low, steady beat of a single drum. A moment later, though they can't possibly have heard the drumming, someone in the main room thumps on the table and everyone falls silent.

Someone starts to sing. Sakuya thinks it's her father, though she's never heard him sing before. She's never even heard him hum, or whistle, or mumble along with the radio. Everyone joins in, clapping with the same tempo as the drum, though slightly out of time. The song is strange, unfamiliar. Goosebumps rise on Sakuya's arms.

Sayaka bends to the basket at her feet, and picks out a wooden mask. She hands a second to Sakuya. "It's almost time," she whispers.

Wearing the mask feels claustrophobic. The eye-holes cut her peripheral vision, and the smell of wood so close to her face feels like being shut up in - some kind of box. Sweat prickles on her forehead. For some reason she thinks of her mother, brushing her hair as her father locked the door on her.

The song ends, and there's a scuffle of many feet rising. A moment later the islanders spill out into the hallway, masked and robed and strangely silent, considering how loud they were being before. One of them coughs, and his neighbour nudges him.

Sakuya glances quickly at Sayaka, and they bow at almost the same time, greeting the islanders. Sayaka turns silently to open the door, and side by side, walking with a slow funereal gait, they lead the way through the old hallway to the Lunar Eclipse Hall. Sakuya glimpses the moon through the windows, flickering behind the bars, never quite showing its whole face.

The crowds are already gathered at the dais, and the stage area shines bone-white in the moonlight streaming down. Sayaka and Sakuya stand to either side of the door as the islanders process in and take their places. Her father is last, and he turns to lock the doors behind him. Sakuya hopes that he'll pat her head or whisper some word of encouragement to her as he passes, but of course he can't do that, not while he's acting in his ceremonial role. She's annoyed at herself for being so babyish. She scans the crowd, hoping to spot You, but there are too many people, all wearing masks. Everything looks different by candlelight.

When she turns back to the stage, the dancer and instrumentalists have taken their places. She didn't see them come in; it's like they just appeared, like they took form from the vapour rising in the heat. Her stomach drops with nerves she can't explain, even to herself. For an instant it's as if she's the one standing up there, about to perform in front of all those people. She looks for the moon, but it's hidden by the overhanging roof.

The drumming stops. The silence holds, for a moment. Then, at some unseen signal, they begin.

At the beginning it isn't so bad. Once Sakuya's father took her to see a mainland kagura, a performance telling a story of the defeat of a demon. Sayaka was more interested in the masks and costumes than the dance itself, but the beginning was a solitary shrine maiden dancing, and this isn't much different. Only as the dance goes on, the movements change. She no longer moves like someone in control of herself; she moves as if something has hold of her and she's trying to throw it off.

Now everyone is silent. The air is charged, as if lightning is about to strike. Some of them sway slightly, and their eyes behind the masks are points of light, tiny candle flames in endless darkness, and the way the dancer moves, she recognises it now. It's the way her mother moves, during those fits of violence when she isn't herself. This is how she moves when she's pacing the room, twisting and spinning suddenly as if to catch something by surprise. This is how she hurls herself at the wall.

The woman isn't dancing at all; she needs help, someone should help her, but nobody moves. Even Sakuya's father is motionless, his shape at the front of the crowd standing still as all the others. The shadows are fading - no, the shadows are growing, into one great inkblot that will envelop them all.

Someone whispers in Sakuya's ear and she jerks, but no one's there. Something catches at her hair. Something buzzes by her face. It's like being in the middle of a swarm of buzzing insects, but she can't see anything. There's only the rising hum, and the feeling that something is trying to crawl inside her. Darkness, thousands of points of darkness, are swallowing the moon, opening a hole in the sky for the dead to pour through.

It takes all of Sakuya's will to keep standing there, stay motionless and not thrash around like the desperate dancer is doing on the stage. Then another sound breaks in, under the maddening crash and thrum, like the first rays of cool moonlight on a stifling summer night. It breaks through the swarming darkness. Sakuya turns to see what it is, and realises that Sayaka, standing beside her, is humming.

She does it quietly; no one else will be able to hear it over the music. But peace radiates out as she sings. Even as the moon grows dark, it's as if she holds a cool, clean light cupped in her hands. At the moment of the eclipse, Sakuya isn't watching the dancers at all. She can only look at the girl beside her.

And then it's over. Sakuya feels as if years have passed, and at the same time, can't believe she just stood here for two hours. The dancer bows and leaves the stage, with the Kanade behind her, and apart from a sheen of sweat on her bare neck, she doesn't seem to have been through some terrible ordeal.

"Are you all right?" Sayaka whispers.

Sakuya just shakes her head. As soon as she can reasonably get away with it, she pulls the mask off and rubs her face, but the worst of the feeling has passed. She wants to tell Sayaka about it, and ask her about the song, but then she catches a glimpse of her father over by the video recorder, and remembers that she's the older one here, the daughter of the Haibara family. She shouldn't be overwhelmed, if Sayaka isn't.

"Just hot," she says. "That was long." As they're leaving, as Sayaka is taking her mask off, she mumbles, "Thanks, for what you did," but she doesn't know if Sayaka hears it or not.

Later, at home, she creeps into her mother's room. It's dark, but her mother is awake, holding the radio in her lap, turning the dial through bands of static and distant music drifting across from the mainland.

Sakuya tries to find the words. She tries to think how to say how it felt, and how it feels now, as if something has touched her and changed her, as if something is lost forever. But in the end, all she can do is cry. Her mother holds her, and strokes her hair, and whispers something Sakuya won't understand for many years.

"We're the same," she says. "I wish we weren't the same. I'm so sorry."

The songs from the mainland have faded. Under her words, the radio static runs like a tide, an emptiness that swallows up sound.

\----

Sakuya opens her arms to encircle the moon. It isn't full tonight, of course, just a crescent, drowning in the blue of the evening sky. But when she makes the gesture she can almost feel it - the shape of what is to come.

The wet sand yields under her bare feet, and she tries to step with such precision that each footprint is distinct. The dancing master told her not to worry so much about exactness; the Kagura is supposed to have a wildness to it. But when Sakuya tries, all she can think of is her mother in the depths of her illness, groping about the house like a blind woman, or raging, flailing, striking the walls. She won't let it carry her off that way. She will keep control.

For as long as she can, at least. The first twenty minutes of the dance are more or less choreographed. After that, it's a descent into the unknown. She's always stopped before that point. She isn't afraid of improvising; she's afraid that she won't have to.

She stops now, and turns to Sayaka for an opinion. Sayaka is humming under her breath, something teasingly familiar, and to Sakuya's brief irritation, her eyes are closed.

"Was it that boring?" Sakuya says, trying to sound light. "Or just so bad you couldn't watch?"

Sayaka opens her eyes, shamefaced. "I'm sorry. I was watching, honestly, and it was wonderful. It's just - you're bleeding."

Sakuya looks down. It's true. Spots of blood mar the pattern of her steps, and stain the deepest part of her footprints. She stands on one leg to check the sole of her foot, and pries loose a little sliver of shell from between her first two toes.

"It doesn't hurt," she says, flicking it away into the waves. "I didn't even feel it."

She makes her way back up the beach and digs through her bag for a tissue to staunch the bleeding, but by the time she finds one it has stopped by itself. She can't even see the wound.

"So," she says, "do you call that a bad sign?"

Sayaka smiles her quiet smile, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "I would usually recommend a cleansing, but in your case..."

"Right." Sakuya has five - no, six more ritual purifications lined up before the night of the eclipse. She's mortally sick of having things waved at her, sprinkled on her, chanted over her; and sick of sitting in uncomfortable places for hours, pretending to meditate.

"I'll be glad when this is all over," she says. Then she can see Ayako again. She hasn't been allowed to for more than two weeks. Father says it would be too much of a distraction so close to the Kagura. "Things will be better when I'm Ceremony Master."

"You? Your brother, surely."

"Oh, well..." Sakuya smiles. "In name, perhaps. But he'll do whatever I say, you know. He doesn't really want all that responsibility. He's too impatient."

Sayaka eyes her sidelong, but as usual she keeps her opinions to herself. "And what will you do, as Ceremony Master?"

"For one thing, I'll choose dancers for the Kagura who actually want to do it. There are enough of them. Why not hold auditions instead of one person choosing? Father only picked me because of family tradition, anyway."

"Your mother was Utsuwa as well, wasn't she?" Sayaka says.

"Yes," Sakuya says. It's common knowledge now, though she didn't find out about it until after her mother was already dead. "The year before I was born. People have said she was never exactly the same after."

It isn't cold. She won't shiver. She won't think about what her mother went through, losing herself to the dance in front of all those people. She won't think - as she has, many times - that if her mother were still alive, she would have prevented her daughter from sharing her fate, just as she stopped Sakuya from becoming a Kanade back then.

"We don't know for sure it was the Kagura that made her sick," she says instead. "But that's what people say."

"In the old days," Sayaka begins, in her usual careful way, "there used to be a selection process - "

"Oh, no, look. It's the mask-maker's son - he's coming this way. Let's go before he sees us; he'll just want to talk about genealogy again." Without waiting for an answer, she starts pulling on her socks and shoes, putting things away in her bag. "He was at the purification the other week, and the mask fitting. He's such a bore, and he'll probably be head mask-maker soon; the Yomotsuki head does not look well. What was his name? The boy, I mean. Sou- Souga?"

"Souya."

"That's right. I knew it would have to begin with Sou, anyway. I can't remember which one's which. He started telling me one of his stories once, and I only realised at the end it was about two different Yomotsukis, not one."

"It's getting late, anyway," Sayaka murmurs, brushing sand from her school skirt. "I should be going home."

"Wait - don't go yet. I'll be so busy before the ritual, I probably won't get to see you. You have to wish me luck, at least."

"Of course I do. But you don't have anything to worry about."

Sakuya casts about for a good reason, something that will make Sayaka stay. She isn't even sure why it matters so much. Her mother died when she was thirteen, and since then she's never asked for help, never let herself be afraid. She's always been the strong one, taking Sayaka under her wing at school, helping counteract the Minazukis' weird reputation. She's a Haibara. When has her father ever asked anyone for help? When has You, for that matter? But as the Kagura gets closer, all she can think of is that she wishes she had a little of Sayaka's self-possession, just a little of her certainty.

Perhaps Sayaka senses some of what she's thinking, because she steps forward and puts her hand on Sakuya's wrist. She's old-fashioned, physically reticent; the gesture means a lot, coming from her.

"You'll be all right," she says.

But now that Sakuya has the reassurance she was hoping for, it does nothing to make her feel better. It changes nothing. It's all very well for Sayaka to say things will be fine; come the night of the eclipse, she'll be in the audience, watching from a position of safety. Sakuya's the one who'll be alone, dancing at the edge of the void, and maybe it's not comfort and platitudes she wants after all. Maybe she wants someone else to acknowledge the danger she feels. Maybe this whole time, deep down, she's wanted someone to be afraid for her.

\----

The crescent grows and opens like a rotten flower. Two weeks later Sakuya steps out onto the dais. The floor is packed earth and stone beneath her bare feet, cooler than the sand of the beach at sunset. The murmur of voices from the audience falls away as she takes her place; the silence spreads outward like a wave. She looks for Sayaka but can't find her.

_Keep control._

She can't. Already she can feel it slipping. The moon and the mask together are too strong. She isn't Sakuya Haibara; she is a stranger among strangers. She tries to find one familiar figure - her father, You, Sayaka. She's alone.

The Utsuwa used to dance herself to death, in the old days. What are they waiting for, these masked onlookers, when they look at her? Have they come to see her dance, or die before their eyes?

 _Someone will pull me back now,_ she thinks, and the music begins. She opens her arms to the moon, which she can't even see past the pillars. During practice she wondered how she would know when it was time, but now she feels foolish that the question even occurred to her. Of course she'll know, as surely as she'd know if she were blinded.

Too soon she reaches the end of the choreographed steps. The edge of the emptiness. She can feel it. The Kagura isn't a dance, but an hours-long, graceful fall towards oblivion.

_Someone will pull me back now..._

She paces the circle like a hunted creature, trying to run when there's no way out. She can no longer see anything detailed through the eye-holes of the mask, just a blur of candlelight and shadow, and her own hands and feet when they flash in front of her. It's as if they belong to someone else.

There's a rising murmur, voices swarming all around her, but the crowd is silent. It's not coming from them. It's the moon - voices whispering from the moon, dead voices. They tried to carry her away ten years ago, when she was just a child, and now she is offered up to them.

_Someone..._

The crowd recedes. They have ceased to be individual people; they are joining the sea of sound. She can't hear anything over their cacophony. The swarm is in her, under the mask and in her mouth, claws in her hair, wings in her throat, cramming themselves inside her, and there's nowhere for the dead to go but deeper down, nothing for them to do but devour the very core of her as darkness devours the moon.

_Someone..._

Nothing.

_I know a quiet place._

It begins as a thought in her mind, but it's not hers. The voice is unfamiliar. In the glimpses she can catch through the eye-holes of her mask, she no longer sees the crowd, or the stage, or the hall - only one other figure standing alone in the darkness. The next instant it's further away, beckoning. She has no idea where it's leading her, but she doesn't care. Someone has come after all. Someone cares enough to save her.

She leaves the sounds behind. It's as if she's found a secret door leading away from the stage and out into the dark woods, and the woman ahead is showing her the way. Somewhere behind, above, far away, her body keeps dancing. The thought of going back to that dancing puppet is worse than staying here in the dark.

Sakuya keeps her eyes fixed on the figure gliding between the trees. She moves slowly, but with a ponderous grace, as if she's dancing under the sea, and Sakuya knows suddenly that this is how her mother walked, when she was climbing the hospital steps to the roof, to her death. It must be something Utsuwa have in common.

"Mother?" she calls out. Her voice falls strangely flat, but that must be because her voice is back with her body, so far behind.

 _Mother?_ the woman whispers. Not an answer, just an echo. Her clothes are tattered, corroded blue. Of course it isn't her mother; this one has been wandering here a long, long time.

Before her, black but somehow shining in the darkness, there is a still pool. The surface is empty; not even a reflection. Not even hers.

The figure pauses on the other side, looking back. She has no face. Even as Sakuya stares at her, she's receding.

"Wait!" Sakuya calls suddenly. "How do I get back from here?"

The woman pauses again. She's almost out of sight. "Didn't anyone teach you?"

"Teach me what?"

"It never works for me," the woman says. "I suppose I strayed too far. But maybe it will help you."

She starts to hum something. She's so far away, and her voice is so low, Sakuya can only hear fragments. She wants to call out again for the woman to wait, but she's afraid to miss a note. Before long, the woman in blue disappears between the trees, taking her song with her.

Sakuya looks down again at the pool. Its glassy surface drags at her like sleep. But she's afraid, too. She's afraid of the voices that must have filled her empty shell by now, afraid to give herself back to them, but the pool only offers a different sort of surrender. Either way, she'll lose herself.

 _If I stay I'll be like her._ She glances through the trees, but there isn't so much as a blur to show where the woman was. _But if I go, I'll be like my mother._

Her mother, who stayed long enough to see her daughter halfway to womanhood before finally ending her life. Who fought to keep her from harm, when no one else would.

If Sakuya stays, she'll never see Ayako again. She won't be able to protect her. She won't even get the chance any mother should have: to try and save her daughter from sharing the same fate.

She doesn't remember making the choice.

She doesn't remember a lot of things, after that.


	2. Chapter 2

The day after the festival is quiet, traditionally. None of the island businesses are open, and the ferry runs on a reduced timetable. People stay at home and think pious thoughts. Tourists grumble that it's just a ploy to make more money, keeping them on the island when they just want to go home, but they're wrong. It's a mourning day. For an evening the dead came close, and now they're gone again.

Sayaka slips out at low tide, feeling guilty. She wouldn't have considered breaking the abstinence before, even though it's more of a custom than a rule, but she can't stay at home any longer. The atmosphere is oppressive, and worse indoors than out.

She walks quickly along the causeway to the main island, arms folded and head bowed, as if it's cold, though it isn't. The sky has been threatening rain all day, but rain never comes.

Houses on the island don't have walls around them, for the most part, just fences. Haibara House is an oddity. The old Haibaras built their family residence as imposing as possible, set on its promontory where the woods open out, but it's as if when they were done they had second thoughts, and now the wall half hides it. You can see its dark tile roof, that's all, and one shuttered window, like a suspicious old man peering out from under a low-brimmed hat.

Sayaka half expects that when she knocks Sakuya won't be there. She often goes out for walks in the morning, roaming along the cliff-tops and through the forest, sometimes all the way to the top of the dormant volcano. But Director Haibara's assistant tells Sayaka to come on in, and the automatic gates creak open. Inside the raked pebbles and carefully-shaped hedges convey a sense of order and tranquillity, and yet something grates. It's as if all the lines in the gravel are at slightly the wrong angle, and all the bushes are slightly unbalanced, and the house itself stands subtly askew. No one comes out to greet her.

Sakuya is in her room, sitting on her bed. There's nothing sickly-looking about her, yet the impression is of a sickroom, a confinement. She holds a music box in her lap, listening to it, winding it up, listening again until the tune runs down. It's a version of the lunar melody, but the phase is wrong for the morning after the eclipse.

"Are you all right?" Sayaka says.

Sakuya looks up at her, frowns slightly, then goes back to her music box. Underneath its sweet jangle, Sayaka can hear something else. She's afraid to go closer, but she shuts the door behind her and forces herself to go and sit on the bed next to Sakuya.

This close, she can see that Sakuya hasn't slept, either. Her heavy hair is uncombed, and her luminous eyes are glassy and distracted. She turns the winding key in the music box with slow, clumsy movements, as if her fingers have gone numb.

"I looked for you after the festival. They said you'd gone straight home. I was worried. Did you feel ill?"

Sakuya shakes her head slowly from side to side. "I was... I..."

She winds the music box and holds the key still for a moment, so the music is trapped, struggling to get out. When she releases it, delicate mechanisms whir with strain.

"I went somewhere," Sakuya says. "Dark... deep... far away. I couldn't hear the song to come back. What if I'm still there?"

The tinkling from the music box slows and stops, mid-phrase. Now Sayaka can hear what she didn't want to.

Sakuya's melody has always been strong, yellow-blue and bright as a summer morning. When they were children Sayaka could hear her clear across the school building. She could sing along with it, every note clear.

Now it wanders, wavers, hesitates. Notes twang out of key. Other melodies have broken in. It's like scratching a hole in a page of music and seeing part of the tune on the next page. Nothing is whole; it's all fragments, all at odds. Sakuya is a hundred different people, shining through.

Sayaka knows you can't reach someone when they've gone this far. She knows from bitter experience. She's only sixteen, but she's watched it happen to friends, relatives, people she would have said were made of the island rock and would be there forever. Her own mother, before she died.

"I touched the empty," Sakuya says, and lets out a musical, chilling little laugh. "And when I came back it was waiting for me, in the dark where the moon used to be." She looks at Sayaka intently. "My mother had a radio. I don't know where it went, you know? I wish I had it now. It drowns them out."

She starts to wind the music box again. Sayaka takes it from her before she can.

"That's the wrong melody," she says. "Let's go to the room with the piano, shall we? Maybe I can help."

"Oh, can you?" Sakuya says, with such sudden hope that tears of pity sting Sayaka's eyes. "I keep waiting for it to get quiet, and it never does."

A door down the hall clicks shut as they pass it — Sakuya's little brother, eavesdropping, no doubt. He's always given Sayaka the creeps, but then so does Sakuya herself, sometimes. It's like her grandmother warned her: the Haibaras are great people, great priests of the island, and they deserve respect, but they're not like other people. The island used to be a harder place, and they haven't forgotten.

But they've forgotten some things. The piano in Haibara House is banished to a small, windowless room. The Tsukimori traditions have fallen out of common knowledge, and no one thinks they were very important — no one except the women of the clan, and most of them are dead now, or too old to do anything. Shigeto Haibara has talked about experimenting with music therapy as if it's a curiosity, nothing more.

She sits Sakuya down on a stool in the corner and tries to ignore the distracting tangle of sound coming from her. She plays a song she knows, a variant of the lunar melody from the southern tip of the archipelago. It's said to bring home wanderers and the moon-haunted, and ease delusions. It helps — a little — not enough. Sakuya sits back against the wall, her eyes closed.

Next Sayaka tries a lullaby for sick children, to ward off evil spirits and calm nightmares. It's an old Rougetsu Island song, and as far as she knows only she remembers it, now all her female relatives are dead. Once it was sung by grieving mothers as they made Hozuki dolls. The lunar melody weaves through it like one pale thread in a dark fabric. Sakuya smiles, and hums along after a few repetitions, and that helps too — but only a little.

She tries some others: soothing songs, protective songs, and one ceremonial chant that she has to murmur in her throat along with the deep sway of the piano. They do less than the others. Finally, she plays the Tsukimori Song, the old moon singing her daughter out of the shadow, the dark moon singing itself back to life. Even outside its proper time it's the strongest melody she knows, and she plays it with all her heart. When it's over Sakuya has fallen asleep against the wall, her expression peaceful. But she's still not herself. When Sayaka touches her to brush the hair back from her cheeks, she feels the wrongness like a snapped string, a jammed key. It might never be right again.

Sakuya wakes a little at the touch, though she's dreamy and docile. Sayaka leads her back to her room, and she follows, singing under her breath. Sayaka doesn't recognise the tune, and Sayaka knows all the songs of the island. This one stirs the hairs on her neck. "Where did you hear that?" she asks.

"In the dark," Sakuya says. "Between the trees. The one who went ahead of me, she said to follow. She sang it."

"Who?"

"I couldn't see her face. But she was dressed like me."

An Utsuwa. A doppelgänger, maybe, or...

There was another, very long ago. Her name is lost to time, but the day of her death is still a day of mourning among the Tsukimori. The Utsuwa who caused the Day Without Suffering has no grave; her body was never found. Perhaps she still wanders in that nothingness, down at the bottom of the human soul, where lies the gateway to the other side.

As Sakuya comes more fully awake, she almost seems like herself again. She puts the music box away without fuss, and starts tidying the room, making the bed. Once she catches sight of herself in the mirror, and pauses, but a moment later she laughs and says, "Look at the state of me. No wonder you were worried." Sayaka would be comforted, if she couldn't hear the missed notes and wandering phrases of Sakuya's melody, and sense the others like thunder rumbling below.

But there's nothing more she can do.

She leaves Sakuya sitting at the mirror, combing her hair. She reaches the end of the hallway, almost makes it to the stairs, and then You Haibara comes out of his room and catches up to her.

He's a skinny boy, pale and unwholesome. Sakuya's amber eyes look colourless on him, untrustworthy. Usually he smiles as if everything is a joke, but now his face is serious.

"What's wrong with her?" he asks.

"Your father is a doctor," Sayaka says stiffly. "Surely you'd be better off asking him."

Haibara rolls his eyes. "He says she's _tired_. She's not _tired_. Just tell me what's wrong."

"The festival, it..." How to explain to a person who can't hear? "It changed her. Nothing went wrong, she just wasn't suited. She's too sensitive."

"I don't know what that means," he snarls. "Just say it plainly."

"She's unstable," Sayaka says. She hates to say it, but she knows it's true. "She's not Budding yet, but it won't be long."

"Getsuyuu Syndrome. Like my mother."

"That's right."

He stands, searching her face, trying to find a lie. Then, to her astonishment, he lunges forward and takes her hand, holding it to his chest. The antique gesture of supplication is oddly moving, but much more deeply embarrassing. Sayaka wants to sink back through the walls.

"Tell me what to do to make her better."

"I don't — "

"Father says you the Tsukimori women know secrets. Things you haven't told anyone in years. You're the ones who stopped the Day Without Suffering back then, and you've never said how. You can cure her, can't you?"

Sayaka stammers something even she can't understand. She didn't think anyone remembered the Tsukimori any more, least of all Shigeto Haibara's indolent son. She pulls her hand free, fighting the urge to wipe his touch away on her hip. "I can't. If we knew how to cure it, we would. The only way we know is the Kiraigou."

A mistake. She corrects herself swiftly — "Kagura, I mean" — but You Haibara is gazing up at her with narrowed eyes.

"Not the Kagura," he says. "The original form. That's what you said. Is it true?"

"I don't know. Please, believe me, I don't. There are old books — some of them say the Kiraigou could — but it's too dangerous. No one knows the full process of the ritual. It was stopped for a reason. Almost all of the documents you'd need were burned. It's not safe!"

"Of course," he says, and smiles. She doesn't trust it a bit. "You're right. No one could do it nowadays. It's impossible."

"I have songs that can help. They'll stabilise her when she gets volatile, at least for a few months. Maybe years." There's a reason they don't do that, dragging the sickness out — it's not treatment, not really, and it isn't kind. It's a sort of torture, sustaining the afflicted long past the time when they should have found the mercy of death. But she'll say anything to turn him from that dangerous line of thought.

And she thinks it's worked, for a little while. He starts walking her towards the door, asking her about the songs, asking how often she can come. But in the entrance his eyes slide sideways to look at her, chips of yellow glass, and she knows he hasn't forgotten.

Just as she's sliding the door shut, she hears a sound like a child's uninhibited laughter. She thinks it comes from deeper in the house, but that makes no sense. Perhaps it was just the door squeaking, or a seagull calling somewhere in the distance. But in the instant that she hears it, it flashes through her mind, bizarre and uncomfortable, that it's Sakuya — that all her seeming normality at the end was a sham, and somehow overnight the sickness has stripped her of all reason.

The clouds are lower than ever as she starts back home, and the afternoon is as dark as evening. Thunder rumbles in the distance. She walks fast, head down, braced for the relief of rain. But there's only the heat and the dark, damp wind, the day balanced on a knife-edge, teetering, suspended, the storm on the horizon, lightning waiting to strike.


End file.
